Animatronic modelling project

I am currently working on a personal project of making a 3D model on an animatronic in Maya. The animatronic that I am currently working on Circus Baby from Sister Location of the Five Night’s at Freddy’s series. I had made other projects after I first started college working on other animatronics from the series that was passable for the first attempt; however, they ended up looking flat, not very detailed and I didn’t know how some stuff worked so holes for the eyes ended up being a black cylinder at first.

This is currently how far I am into the modelling process. The eyes being coloured in doesn’t mean anything, it was just easier to colour them in before I started to combine everything plus it adds a bit of life to the model whilst working. I had imported an image of my drawing for reference so that I knew where to put the wires. If you are going to import images into Maya, select the view by pressing space then select and import it into the front, side or top view, not perspective as scaling will be problematic if you import in perspective mode. To import, just press on view under where you choose the polygons to make the model, select image plane then import image.

The next part is just trying to make the model look as close as the reference as you can make it. The eyes is where I started since it was the more complex part of the model. I used a sphere for the eye ball an used a cube for the eyelids. The cube was broken up into segments so that there was more edges that I could move the edges to make eyelids, the eyelashes and wires are both made out of cylinders. Extruding is required to make the model more realistic.

This is my current progress on the model. I still need to make the face plates more round as well as sort out the hair so that it fits the top face plate along with including the outer parts of the hair. The edges also need to made smooth to improve the model. I should also texture the model. Getting the hair to work on the face plate has proved challenging as I need to Booleans difference so I get the gaps but the models aren’t properly lined up. I will need to rotate the model around since rotating the camera isn’t really useful in this situation.